Quantcast
Channel: Tnooz» china travel daily
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

The Scan: China holds its first major tourism forum, WeHostels goes mobile-only, and other news

0
0

Some interesting facts were revealed at the three-day forum in Macao, the first time China has hosted a “mega international tourism forum,” and more items in our roundup of the stories that are making news and driving opinion on 12 September.

Global travel conference in China

The Global Tourism Economy Forum (GTEF) held in Macao 9-11 September drew 1,000 industry professionals from across the globe.

macau china tourism

Some key takeways, based on press accounts, including China Daily:

Google’s John Liu, head of Greater China at Google noted that travelers do make an average of 55 online searches before booking a trip. Half of these travelers base their ultimate decision on the advice of people they know and trust.

Brendan Jacobson, Global Head of Sales at Google-owned Zagat Survey, confirmed that Zagat planned to post user-generated reviews of every tourist destination in the world via Google.

CEO Fan Mi of China’s leading OTA  Ctrip.com, said his company aimed to become a more complete online travel platform, which may mean hiring more employees to answer customer queries. He sees Expedia and Travelocity as his main competitors.

A couple of weeks ago, CTrip.com partnered with Priceline-owned Booking.com to provide an overseas hotel reservation platform for domestic consumers.

Anthony Dorment, global strategy & sales projects director of Lonely Planet (owned by BBC Worldwide) said the company has ended its its licensing agreement with one mainland company and will announce a new partner shortly. It may give away free content in a way to build market share, Dorment said.

WeHostels (formerly InBed.me) goes mobile-only

In the last few months, WeHostels, headquartered in Argentina, saw its traffic from mobile devices growing 10x times faster than its usage pace on desktops. 

So the company developed an iPhone app… and then killed its PC version to go all mobile, as TC reported yesterday.

The company’s co-founder Diego Saez-Gil  tells Tnooz that it has brought on board a new CTO with a mobile development background, having built Flipzu (mobile broadcasting) and Comfronte (acquired by Grupo Clarin), and worked before at HP in the mobile team.

 

Australia gets a hotel haggling website

After a two month launch delay, online auction service, GraysOnline has unveiled GraysEscape as its new offer-based hotel reservation website. The site replaces Ubid4rooms, a website purchased by GraysOnline earlier this year. 

Users of GraysEscape can make an offer to a hotel, with the hotelier accepting or bargaining with the customer for another rate within three hours.

Concur offers an integrated solution via NetSuite

Concur said yesterday that it now offers its services to customers of another cloud-based company, NetSuite, making travel and expense spend data comprehensible through NetSuite’s Accounts Payable system.

British travelers still eager to vacation on cruise ships

Travelzoo surveyed 1,865 UK-based Travelzoo subscribers and found that 96% of those considering a cruise have not been put off by the Costa Concordia tragedy.

 

NB: Image courtesy GTEF.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images